Sandfly continues to be a changing home

When James Miller speaks of Sandfly, he starts with 150-year-old live oak trees, the creek where he was baptized, the islands where most of the original settlers came from, Skidaway, Dutch, Ossabaw.

Not the Target department store or the latest link of the Truman Parkway, both of which are scheduled for construction in his back yard.

He talks about how the early homes were built. How people would buy material, stack it on the site and wait for their fellow neighbors carpenters, brick masons and electricians to start working. At no cost.

He tells about hogs in the backyard, pecan orchards, goats that pulled wagons loaded with children, hundreds of acres owned by black people, and his mother, Miss Katy, who fed the neighborhood.

Not all the meetings of the Metropolitan Planning Commission that he and his neighbors have attended in the past few years.

Oh, he can talk about that, too. He knows plenty about set-backs, commissioners who pretend to listen but appear to have their minds made up, the route of the Truman Parkway. He knows which part of Skidaway Road is scheduled for widening, which houses are scheduled to go, who is planning to sell. He knows how to look at blueprints.

He also knows how to speak his mind. In 1968, after serving in Vietnam, getting shot up and spending four months in a hospital, Miller left the Army and returned home to Sandfly. But when he watched protesters target soldiers he fought with not the government that sent them there he got angry and reenlisted. He returned to Vietnam.

Then, after 20 more years in the Army, he returned again to Sandfly and worked as a counselor at the Vet Center. A few years ago he was one of 44 people in the country to be chosen as the "Faces of Viet Nam," which is permanently on display at the LBJ library in Texas.

During all this coming and going, Miller watched his community of Sandfly change.

He remembers when the Piggly Wiggly first went in on Skidaway Road, when the Tavern, a center of the community at Skidaway Road and Montgomery Crossroad, was torn down to widen the street. He also watched the apathy of his own community, how the younger people seem to be more individually minded than those of Miller's generation.

As if he knew the community wouldn't be here forever, he started documenting the history of Sandfly in photographs, interviews, scrapbooks. It's a history that dates back to the early 1700s when black people who lived on the islands would take boats to the mainland for supplies and when teachers would ride back to teach the children.

Eventually, the next generation settled in Sandfly and Yamacraw, Thunderbolt, Pinpoint and Montgomery anywhere on the coast where they could hunt, fish, work on the water and plant gardens. They went to Sandfly school, then Haven Home, then Savannah State Industrial College, now Savannah State University.

They lived in a community bordered by churches and cemeteries.

Not anymore. Miller knows that. He knows that "they're going to do what they're going to do." But he's concerned that the developers are trying to put too much in too small a place.

And he can't figure out why someone would cut down old trees and put in young ones or what will happen if two trees are planted instead of the 10 that are promised.

"We've asked who will enforce the original promises," he said, "and no one has an answer."

And when he drives down Interstate 95 near Brunswick and sees an empty mall, he can't help but do some more wondering.

"We've seen it before. We know there will be empty buildings. What then? I don't resent what's happening. I just can't figure out why they wouldn't think more about the people or the history of a community."

Jane Fishman"s column runs Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Her book of columns, 'Everyone's Gotta Be Somewhere," is available in bookstores or by email at gofish5@earthlink.net.